Mon, Dec 01, 2008
 ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne, like new UA coach Niya Butts, was 30 years old when she was hired as head coach. Arizona hopes its youthful hire produces similarly over the long run.
Gail Burton / AP 2008
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Assessment Technology, Inc Social Studies Content Writer General CORT Warehouse Supervisor General CORT WAREHOUSE/DRIVER Health Care Rio Salado College PA's/Online Instructors Construction Komatsu Equipment Co Mechanic SportsOpinion by Greg Hansen : This gamble by Wildcats might just be one for agesTucson, Arizona | Published: 04.04.2008
During Wednesday's lunch hour rush at the Arizona Inn, Arizona Wildcats coaches Mike Candrea, Dave Rubio and Fred Harvey were seated with an unfamiliar face.
Niya Butts is a 30-year-old single black woman from Lexington, Ky. Wednesday, engaged in dialogue with a distinguished audience of UA coaches, she made an impressive case to be part of the club.
If Butts felt the pressure, it didn't show. If she was cowed by her company, she fought through it.
"At the end of the lunch,'' said Rubio, who has coached Arizona into volleyball's equivalent of the Final Four, "it was, 'OK, this may be the one; she's got the stuff.' "
Was this a rush to judgment? Butts has never coached a basketball game of any type. The woman she is to replace, Joan Bonvicini, coached 906.
Yet UA athletic director Jim Livengood also had a Rubio-type feeling when he researched, and then met Kentucky's associate head women's basketball coach.
"I was tipped off by Mitch Barnhart, who is Kentucky's athletic director and a longtime friend of mine,'' Livengood said. "He told me, 'She is ready now to be a head coach.' He said that anyone who has been around Niya would tell you that.''
And so they did.
On Thursday, the Wildcats agreed to pay Butts $200,000 a year, plus incentives, to rebuild a women's basketball program that lacks energy, charisma, appeal and, gulp, talent.
Perhaps she is too young to know what she is getting herself into. Perhaps she believes that her hyper attitude, her Tennessee pedigree and a willingness to devote her waking hours — she is single — to reconstruct a lifeless program will overcome her total lack of head coaching experience.
This on-the-job-tryout stuff is risky business, as the UA has learned from the ongoing struggle of Mike Stoops But first impressions of Niya Butts, daughter of an industrial crane operator and a school-district cook from Americus, Ga., suggest a change.
"She's an impressive young lady,'' said Rubio. "The impression I got is that she's dynamic, self-assured, very confident, articulate and she carries herself well.
"She's a go-getting, stop-at-nothing type of person. I was amazed at her energy.''
Livengood declined to reveal the comprehensive nature of this coaching search, but he didn't deny that once Butts had been researched, catalogued, interviewed and scrutinized, the search for a coach stopped before its scheduled completion.
This search could have gone on for another week had not Butts, who wore jersey No. 3 while playing for two NCAA championship teams at Tennessee, hit a home run with the selection committee the same way No. 3, Babe Ruth, used to hit 'em out for the New York Yankees.
It couldn't have been an act or a bluff. You can't feign such passion and freshness.
"I love making a difference,'' she said.
The easy stuff is over. Getting the job, and turning Livengood's head, is cake compared to the heavy labor of making Arizona women's basketball relevant.
Arizona's athletic director is struck by Butts' personality and by the way she relates to and treats people. People skills don't equate to Pac-10 victories, but it was one of Bonvicini's shortcomings, and there was no way Arizona could hire another coach high on gruffness and low on warmth.
Ultimately, Butts will have to establish herself as a head coach, which goes far beyond recruiting, charming the community and building relationships with her players. The great unknown, and the inherent risk in hiring a 30-year-old with no head coaching experience, is what she can do under fire.
We will see.
If nothing else, Livengood beat competitors UCLA, Memphis and Alabama in the search for a coach. In doing so, he made a historic hire — the first black female head coach in school history — and he didn't have to break the bank during a time of financial stress at the school.
Nor did he hire the low bidder and merely put a temporary patch on the problems that have plagued UA women's basketball. The UA should be commended for its willingness to finally pay market rate for women's hoops.
In recent years, Pac-10 schools hired two black women, career assistants, from east-of-the-Mississippi precincts — Duke to be exact — to redo troubled basketball programs. Washington added 35-year-old Tia Jackson and Oregon State hired 43-year-old LaVonda Wagner.
Positive results are not immediately forthcoming.
Butts is the youngest Pac-10 head coach but remember this: In 1996, ASU's Charli Turner Thorne was hired away from NAU. She, too, was 30. The long-moribund Sun Devils were patient as she went 9-19, 10-17, 12-15 and 14-15.
The Sun Devils are now a national power who have rolled over Arizona in eight consecutive games.
It is Niya Butts' job to change all of that. Welcome to the club.
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